


A Turn of the Glass

by RaisingCaiin



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: I'm Sorry, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-10
Updated: 2017-11-10
Packaged: 2019-01-31 09:15:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12678900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RaisingCaiin/pseuds/RaisingCaiin
Summary: 9 Quellë, S.A. 1695Final hour, second watchOst-in-EdhilTo Celeborn, Lord of Laurelindórenan:YES IT’S ME KEEP READING YOU RIDICULOUS DORIATHRIN two lines more that’s all I ask, please





	A Turn of the Glass

**9 Quellë, S.A. 1695**

**Final hour, second watch**

**Ost-in-Edhil**

 

Celeborn, Lord of Laurelindórenan:

YES IT’S ME KEEP READING YOU RIDICULOUS DORIATHRIN two lines more that’s all I ask, please

Sending you an item, would’ve been folded up in this note. Keep it – you, mind, not Artanis, she’s got enough of the adamant in her without any further encouragement – and secure it well.

I am so sorry.

There, that’s it, my two lines – three, even. You can stop reading now, if you like.

Slid a dagger between my ribs, the beginning of third watch this ninth-day of Quellë. Yes, it was quick, or so I am going to assume – made sure to practice on a few of the orcish scouts we nabbed early on, as this was too important be botching up with hesitation or inexperience. No, of course I didn’t tell anyone. I won’t have any innocents made kinslayers on my behalf. Won’t? Wouldn’t? Wouldn’t have? Anyway. Nothing you can do now at any rate, so stop fretting, you great mother hen.

If you want to make a comparison to my disinherited eldest uncle in your next round of comparative theology with my aunt, though, please do go for it.

Sorry, sorry.

Didn’t account for being afraid, I guess.

Stop make that face. I _am_ sorry.

To have troubled you with this, and with my item, that is. Not sorry about what I will have done, in a little over three-quarters a turn of the glass.

Brought all _that_ on myself. Nothing else I could do.

 Unsure how much news has gotten out, as we’ve been under siege for near half a month as Men reckon time, but you’ve probably heard this much at least – my god-guest of 400 years began acting oddly the closer we drew to perfecting ringcraft, and then up and vanished the night that we did.  

 _Why not call for help, Celebrimbor_ , my imagination of you asks.  

 _Because nothing is wrong_ , I would have responded, if actually asked. _Because he wouldn’t have just left ~~me~~ us. Because there is nothing that I cannot fix, be it a problem of craft or of misunderstanding, and besides, why won’t you call me Tyelperinquar, kinsman? _  

Couldn’t fix it, though, as I’m sure you’ve also guessed by this point. Why? Because it turns out that my guest was actually the Lieutenant of Morgoth himself.

If Ereinion hasn’t reached Laurelindórenan yet, and this is the first you’ve heard of it, then I am sorry again, to have been the one to break the news to you. Yes, Annatar was Sauron.

Is Sauron.

No, the first I knew of it was when ~~I put on the ring I am sending to you~~ he reached across the world and into my mind.

Also no – the next I knew of it, I was waking from a fortnight insensate and my people were telling me that he was already here.

And he is, Celeborn. Camped right outside the city walls, with what looks to be every last misshapen creature and machine of war left over after the sinking of Beleriand. Gave us one last night to ‘reconsider our position’ or some shite. Said he would enter the city himself at first light, take back what was his.

There’s the crux of it, though. Pretty damned sure – damned, and sure, damned sure – that this description is only in part about that which I am sending you for safekeeping.

But truly – that which is his, that which he will wrest back?  

Me, Celeborn. That’s me. _His_. The ~~rings~~ other things, he probably envisions too, yes, but in main, in sum – no.

It is me.

And that is the reason I did as I did.

Have you ever loved someone, Celeborn?

Yes yes yes, I’m sure you’d hurry to say my aunt, and right you would be not to risk her rage, but – really loved someone?

As in, has there ever existed anything – a thought, a turn of phrase, a bar of song, a wan face only you could paint a small smile across – that you could not hear, or taste, or touch, or look upon, without thrilling at the wonder of being allowed to do so, and knowing that you were among the privileged few – perhaps even the only – who would ever know that particular experience?

Have you?

Shite. Yes. Apologies yet again – I forget, sometimes, how very few beyond our walls knew.

Of me. And Annatar.

Yes, yes, mother hen. I know, I know.

It is true, though. The one who would raze my city to the ground? Who would pluck my greatest works from its smoking ruins, who would use them to establish himself as lord and god above us all?

That’s him. My lover.

That’s why I asked about love, though, you see. Because you are the only one left whom I _could_ ask, and although this will not reach you in time – for there is no ‘in time,’ anymore, it is far too late for everything – I still feel near as relieved in penning the question, as I would have been to have asked you in any more immediate sense.

Suffered the imprint of your hand across my face for my stupidity too, no doubt, but – asked you, all the same.   

Have you?

For I think – I fear – that I have.

Loved someone, Celeborn.

It was a small number, those whom I loved, but it did include your daughter. I loved her. My sweet niece Rían. May she grow brave as her mother and strong as her father and wiser than her uncle. Untouched by foul hands, all the days of her life.

It included Ereinion. I loved him. Dear cousin. High King in my place, to his chagrin and my relief. May he reign long and live longer still, his reign peaceful and unmarred by war.  

And it included Annatar. I loved him.

I loved him, Celeborn.

If we were still speaking, after you slapped me for my stupidity and my foolishness and my seven shades of heedless madness, then I imagine you would ask me: _but was it real, Celebrimbor_? Why would you never call me Tyelperinquar, kinsman?

You know, never mind – no sooner had I penned that, then I saw the answer that I have sought the entire time I have known you.

Funny, isn’t it. Death, or its impending, is the great clarifier. And it has been death – your people’s tragedy, my former father’s hand – that has stood between us. Well. That, and what you would no doubt term a half-incestuous crush on your future wife. And yet.

Of course it was real, mother hen.

Suppose what you really would have meant is, _did he manipulate you into believing him something other than what actually was_?

And my answer to that would have been no, Celeborn. No, he never built upon anything that was not already there. He could have asked to wear me as a glove upon his hand, and I would have told him yes.

There was a night, actually, that he did, and I did, and it was glorious.

Why?

No, of course it hurt, mother hen. But that is beside the point – shhh, yes it is – because I knew that I could have asked him for the same, or indeed for anything else that I might have needed, and he would not even have wasted breath saying yes, but instead started working out how to give it to me.

And until now, I would have done the same. But now he will ask me for Middle-earth, and my complicity in rendering it submissive to him.

I –

I thought I could have given him anything, Celeborn. But this –

This, I cannot.

Or, well, I could. Say, then, that I _will_ not.

And my refusal is in part because that between him and Middle-earth would not be a mutual exchange, as anything between he and I has been.

And in part it is because Middle-earth is not mine to give. What he would take from Middle-earth, he must earn from Middle-earth, not from me.

But tomorrow he plans to come to me, to ask it of me all the same. And I realized that if I were to stay, to say to him, this I will not give you –

Celeborn, he is a god. He would not ask again, and – he would not need to.

I am not a god.

He would have given me anything, yes, I am sure of it. But in this? He would have to take everything, first.

Is that love, Celeborn?

Wish you were here– no, no, NO I don’t, I’m glad you’re not here. I’m just a little discomposed, is all, and quite utterly alone, the messenger isn’t due for another half-turn of the glass and oh stars Celeborn forgive my shaky hand for I have realized that I just answered my own question for if we adhere to the definition I earlier proposed then yes he loved me yes he loves me celeborn i am alone and he loves me and he is coming and i will not be here to greet him

 

 

 

 

A quarter of the glass to go, before the messenger returns. Praying – to whom? I am the only power I can trust anymore – that she makes it through to you. 

Can’t let myself be derailed again. If this is not written now – before – then it never will be.

But – _stars_ , Celeborn. What a – a, a _trap_ he has laid for me, or else I for him, or even us for ourselves. The fact that he hid his history from me, and the fact that I promised him everything without stopping to think what that might entail –

None of these make my love – and his, I suppose he would say, if I ever saw him again – any less strong. Any less _real_ , to reframe it according to the hypothetical question I earlier assigned my imagination of you.

Whether he manipulated me or not does not change the fact that we cared for each other. That he would have given me anything. That, if asked, I fear I still would.

The Edain have a saying, that the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.

Well, and what of it? Isn’t that always the way of things? The spirit is willing and the flesh is weak, and only foresight screams in warning.

You’re familiar with queens’ men, yes? Or chess as I suppose you’d call it, you ignorant Doriathrin heathen you. But never mind that. All you need to know is that queen’s men, or chess, only works as a game if both players obey its rules.

The moment you step beyond the board – the instant you look up, and realize that your opponent is not an army carved of opposing colors, but your lover, to whom this is but a diversion to entertain you both before the truly important matters of the evening. . .

No, fret not, the comparison is discomfiting me too. Let that be the end of it.  

And anyway, there are no queen’s men left to me, Celeborn. The pieces we have been playing with are not marble or ivory, but elves and orcs, and – and myself, I suppose, as the queen we are both playing to win. My mind, with its knowledge of whence went the items he claims I have stolen. My body, with its convenient need to remain anchored someplace lest it pressure the mind to its breaking point.

Kill off the former, though, and he can’t have the latter. The queen is there, but she lies tipped over, out of play.

Neither side wins.

Suppose I should clarify – it’s not the knife itself that I am afraid of, Celeborn. There’s something of an electric thrill to it, even – the certainty of what is to come, contrasted with the uncertainty of what follows that. Because I am uncertain, mother hen, and – do not lie to me, not now – I know you are too. They say there is a straight road home, but. . .

We are sons of these hinter shores, you and I. Heirs to the west, our kin might claim, but what know you or I of what lies beyond the sea – what home is that to us? What care you or I for white shores, or great mountains, or peaceful woods, when we have all that and more here?

The Edain have an odd term for that concept too – ‘afterlife.’ As though it were not all one great loop, ever circling about itself like uncle Findaráto’s favorite snake-upon-snake ring oh stars celeborn my lover killed my uncle

resolved resolved I am resolved this last turn of the glass and I will see for myself if there is a straight road!

Or not, I suppose, actually. By those same tales, those who leave by their own hand are heir to nothing. Fitting, I suppose. That my birthright, the eternal darkness, shall come upon me after all, oath of Curufinwë or no oath.

Is this the only choice, Celeborn? That either it all be true, or else, none of it at all?

That is what has me jumping at shadows, mother hen, the choice of it all. No more variables or measurements or former studies to be considered, just – this.

No matter. It would not change my mind, either way.

For one other of that small number I can claim I have loved, Celeborn? Is these shores themselves.

I care more for Middle-earth, and her people, than I fear for myself. Let darkness come. I am only afraid of its possibilities – I fear not the thing itself.

Beyond their odd wisdom, too, some tribes of Men believe that all this is cyclical. Can you just imagine it – that the Hunter rises again, and then his Fortress, then my lover, the sun and the moon, my people’s march east? What a thought – Ost-in-Edhil too lives again, Annatar comes promising gifts again, you regain your senses and flee again. I fall in love again, and I write this letter to you again, and I die again.  

And again and again and again.  As many times as it takes.

I’ve no right to ask this of you, but – do not let them romanticize me? Don’t tell them why I did it. Let them think I feared torment, or despaired of my sins, or something along those lines – some explanation plausible for one of my blood and situation. And if he comes, tomorrow, and seeing the results, decides to reassert his right to me – drag my spirit back screaming (no, mother hen, I have no idea whether or not he can do so, I know only that he is a god and utterly enamored) or mount my body in some gruesome way – you will not let it be said that I died for love?

It may be true, but it – the gesture will not be understood as I meant it.

I died _because_ I loved. There’s a tremendous difference, though few will be able to see it. So –

Better to be remembered as a coward or a cheat than the dupe who imagined he could set things right.

But a trickle of sand yet remains, mother hen, and any minute now I will hear the footsteps of my messenger. Then it will be upon me to seal that last small item up with this letter, and open my door, and muster as normal a smile as I can, all the while knowing that hers will be the last living face I see.

Then to lay out my cloak – they are good people, I will not add to their cares with my mess as he bears down upon them – and bank the fire and drive straight and true as I can.  

If you read this, Celeborn, then thank you. And if you did not – if this paper curls to ash within your hearth, or falls along with my messenger on its fraught way to you, or whatever fate may befall – then still, thank you all the same.

For being mate to my aunt, father to my beloved niece. For not falling into the trap that I did.

Footsteps – there she is, my messenger. This is it, then.

Wish with all my heart that there were more I could offer you in the dark times ahead than tainted blessings, inadequate thoughts, and useless prayers to the Ones I fear care nothing for us, disorderly creatures of the muck and the sunlight that we are.

Stars, then, and Middle-earth herself, be kind to you, Celeborn. And to Artanis, and sweet Rían, and all who will be forced to take up my load where I no longer can.

Shouldn’t foist my love upon you, either – suppose by the time you read this, you’ll have seen some inkling of the damage it can do – but I am lost, Celeborn, and where I know I am going, it shall find no place either.

Best leave it somewhere.

All my love, then,

 **Tyelperinquar** ~~Ainundil Curuf~~ **Penatar**

**Author's Note:**

> If this sounds a bit like a letter _from Cloud Atlas_ , that's because the concept is very much borrowed from a letter in _Cloud Atlas_


End file.
